A day after blocking an elaborate $10 million land swap designed to supply a critical right-of-way for the controversial Jefferson Parkway, a federal appeals court on Thursday reversed itself, lifting a short-lived injunction that will now allow the deal to proceed ahead of a Monday deadline.

A three-judge panel with the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the temporary injunction it granted Wednesday afternoon, citing its review of a brief filed Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of the federal defendants in the lawsuit that seeks to stop the land deal.

The federal court now has given the plaintiffs in the case -- environmental groups WildEarth Guardians and Rocky Mountain Wild -- until noon Friday to reply.

"As you can imagine, we're pretty disappointed and not quite sure why the court flip-flopped on this," said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians' climate and energy program director, who likened this week's quickly unfolding legal drama to a roller coaster.

"But we're going to file our reply tomorrow," he said. "We still have a chance. We'll make our case and see what happens next."

Bill Ray, interim director of the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority, said he was not surprised by the court's prompt reversal.

"We fully expected that once the appellate court became aware of what the real situation was, it would agree the real irreparable harm (in this case) doesn't come from the (land) exchange happening, but would come from this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to add significant open space to the benefit of the entire northern metro area being prohibited from proceeding," Ray said. "I find it ironic that environmental advocacy groups are actively fighting against the acquisition of open space to the benefit of the entire metro area."

The land transfer involves the trading of a 617-acre parcel near the southwestern corner of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, known as Section 16, for a 300-foot-wide transportation right-of-way on the eastern edge of the refuge that runs parallel to Indiana Avenue. The right-of-way is viewed as a critical piece of the proposed Jefferson Parkway toll road, which proponents say will nearly complete a high-speed beltway around the Denver metro area.

The deal -- which involves multiple local governments, the Colorado State Land Board and the lawsuit's primary defendants, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior -- already has been extended twice in 2012 and is facing a critical deadline at the end of the year. The Department of Justice in its brief Thursday noted that "a temporary injunction in place on Dec. 31, 2012, will likely sound the death knell for the transaction."

WildEarth Guardians and Rocky Mountain Wild filed an emergency motion seeking the injunction Wednesday after a federal judge last week dismissed the lawsuit brought by the two groups along with Superior and Golden that sought to block the land deal for reasons including the lack of a sufficient environmental assessment.

The environmental groups have appealed the dismissal of that lawsuit, but officials with those groups on Wednesday argued to the court that if the land deal is allowed to take place by the end of the year as planned, even winning that appeal would do little to stop the parkway.

The Department or Justice in its response brief countered that while there are still many things that would have to take place for the parkway to be built should the land deal take place, granting the injunction would cause "irreparable harm" to the defendants by derailing the deal altogether.

Ray, parkway's interim director, this week confirmed that the more than $10 million pledged toward the purchase of Section 16 is set aside in escrow accounts. If transactions do not take place by the end of 2012, he said, there are instructions that the money be returned to its sources, which include the city of Boulder, Boulder County, Arvada, Jefferson County and other governmental entities.

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